AFTER THE FIRE 'BLACK HAWK DOWN' AIMS TO RENDER A HORRIFIC 1993 BATTLE WITH AS MUCH INTENSITY, ACCURACY AS POSSIBLE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Writer

When director Ridley Scott, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and a small army of actors, artisans, advisers and active military personnel were making ``Black Hawk Down'' in Morocco earlier this year, their intention was to create a new kind of war movie about a new kind of warfare.

Now, of course, they've had to make it for a whole new world.

Accelerated into limited release today to qualify for Academy Award consideration - and, hopefully, to tap into the post-Sept. 11 national mood - the film, which had been scheduled to open in mid-March 2002 but now goes into nationwide release Jan. 18, harrowingly depicts the last major firefight U.S. ground forces engaged in.

In October 1993, as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission in the chaotic, starvation-wracked African nation of Somalia, a contingent of 100 Army Rangers and Delta Force operatives staged a helicopter-based raid on a hostile section of Somalia's anarchy-ruled capital city, Mogadishu. The objective (which was achieved) was to capture several lieutenants of a troublesome local warlord, Mohamed Farrah Aidid. But when his clan's militias counterattacked, and in the process shot down two Black Hawk helicopters, the simple extraction turned into an 18-hour bloodbath that left 18 Americans and between 500 and 1,000 Somalis dead.

The incident was symbolized by the photos of one dead American's mutilated body being dragged through a marketplace the following day. The clash proved such a political fiasco that President Clinton pulled all U.S. forces, which originally had been committed by George Bush during his last weeks in office, out of Somalia.

And that was that for most of us. Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Mark Bowden remained intrigued, however, and over the next five years interviewed about 70 of the mission's survivors. His resulting book, ``Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War,'' gave an unusually complete, moment-to-moment, blow-by-blow description of modern, high-tech urban warfare.

Bruckheimer, the Hollywood uber-producer of such romanticized military movies as ``Top Gun'' and ``Pearl Harbor,'' was so impressed with Bowden's story, he bought the film rights before the book was published. Bruckheimer felt it would provide a good opportunity to finally work with Scott, an old friend from when both men were in advertising.

Already on quite a roll - he'd just made the Oscar-winning ``Gladiator'' and the high-profile sequel ``Hannibal'' back-to-back - Scott agreed with the producer that ``Black Hawk'' represented a rare chance to make as realistic a combat film as had ever been attempted.

``I read the script and the book together and thought, what a great story: a half-hour mission turns into 18 hours of murderous behavior,'' the 64-year-old, English director says. ``It was really about a segment of war, an anatomy that the book broke down step-by-step. It would be a massive exercise to put this together into an organic experience, which was all like a hideous game.''

``We had to do some condensing, but we tried to be as true to Mark's book as possible,'' Bruckheimer adds. ``This is a much different picture from 'Pearl Harbor.' That was based on what we could glean from history, since very few people who were there are still alive. But Mark actually interviewed everybody shortly after the event, so their memories were pretty fresh about what happened.

``This is much different from anything that I've ever done before,'' adds Bruckheimer. ``It doesn't let up; it just grabs you by the throat and goes for two hours-plus. It's as close to an actual event as you can possibly be; as far as documenting history, I'd say this is about as good as I've gotten it.''

History repeats?

Criticized for ``Pearl Harbor's'' historical inaccuracies, such as having active U.S. military officers fly Spitfires during the Battle of Britain, Bruckheimer went to great lengths to ensure ``Black Hawk's'' legitimacy.

This involved turning an economically depressed section of Sale, an ancient city across the river from the Moroccan capital of Rabat, into a reasonable facsimile of '90s Mogadishu. There was also the matter of training some 40 actors from a number of different countries - who would play either real-life soldiers or composites of several of them in the film - at actual military bases (Fort Benning, Ga., for those who'd be playing Rangers; Fort Bragg, N.C., for Special Forces; Fort Campbell, Ky., for the helicopter crews), rather than the usual, hokey war-movie boot camps.

And that wasn't the only Pentagon assistance. Massive three-way negotiations among the Department of Defense, the State Department and the Moroccan government ultimately resulted in the arrival of Black Hawks and other service aircraft - and their crews - on location mere days before they were needed. The red tape quagmire was so complicated the production was prepared to import different helicopters from a European rental agency and digitally change them to look like Black Hawks.

In the end, all of this effort and much more convinced two guys who should know - ``Saving Private Ryan's'' Tom Sizemore and his ``Pearl Harbor'' comrade Josh Hartnett - that they were appearing in the most convincing war movie of their careers.

``There's no background, Ridley's just shooting the foreground,'' notes Sizemore, who plays Ranger Lt. Col. Danny McKnight, a man who, despite his own wounds, repeatedly led personnel carriers into the battle zone to try to rescue the injured. ``He's interested in the anatomy of a battle, not a star-driven piece about personality war. And because movies are generally untrue ... can I say lies? Not lies, but fantasies. They'll sell a fantasy of war as something that it isn't. Ridley told me that this is as close as he could get to the indifferent, dispassionate horror of people dying for no reason at all.''

With a little bit of dramatic license, maybe. But a bare minimum compared to most war movies.

``My character was an amalgam,'' admits Hartnett, who plays the idealistic Ranger Staff Sgt. Matt Eversmann. ``Matt wasn't out there the whole night, like I am in the film. And the book is even more jarring because there is three times as much death in it.

``But, on a typical day, it was about 90 degrees, we were wearing all this gear, we were running around in the dirt that the helicopters would kick up into our faces,'' Hartnett adds. ``So it was physically demanding. But we were surrounded by unemployed people who were just standing around, who had nothing else to do. And we also had Rangers there who were actually in this battle and lost friends there. So we literally couldn't complain.''

Real vets impressed

Two of those men were technical advisers Tom Matthews and Lee Van Arsdale. Both retired colonels, Matthews was air mission commander during the Mogadishu skirmish and Van Arsdale was a Delta who wound up walking a reluctant relief force of Pakistani and Malaysian armored vehicles through the mined streets to his trapped comrades.

``This is the most realistic presentation of urban combat that's ever been done,'' Matthews states. ``I'm not saying documentary film that was taken on the spot, but that given this was a (staged) movie.''

``I don't know how it could be done better, short of going into Mogadishu and getting the entire film crew killed doing it,'' adds Van Arsdale. ``In terms of replicating the feel of the city and the equipment and the type of people we're portraying and the tactics and techniques and procedures, I think they've nailed it. The only thing they couldn't replicate was the bloody loud noise of combat and the smell of a Third World city in the middle of a civil war.''

However, the infamous dragging footage is left out. All agree it occurred after the film's main action concludes. Besides, as Scott notes, the unknown corpse could have been related to ``two wives, at least, who may or may not want to see this movie. And I felt enough is enough.''

Another controversy the filmmakers swiftly addressed involved a hastily added closing message that implied the disengagement from Somalia might have emboldened the terrorists who struck on Sept. 11. After screening a print of this version for some journalists in November, Bruckheimer and Scott quickly dropped the closing crawl.

Of course, it was the attacks on New York and Washington that inspired the film's early release - although that decision was made before the response in Afghanistan went as well as it has.

``Nobody knew what to do, after Sept. 11, with any films that had any kind of rough content in them,'' Bruckheimer notes. ``We were all raw nerves, and Americans had no idea if any other kind of shoe was going to drop, if another attack was going to happen. But we felt the movie was very powerful, and should be considered for some kind of accolades at the end of the year.''

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) APOCALYPSE NEW

`Black Hawk Down' a different kind of movie for a world fighting a different kind of war

(2 -- cover -- color) Josh Hartnett

(3 -- cover -- color) Ewan McGregor

(4 -- cover -- color) Sam Shepard

(5) Josh Hartnett, right, and Orlando Bloom, center, find themselves scrambling in ``Black Hawk Down,'' a film about an 18-hour firefight waged in Somalia.

(6) Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, left, and director Ridley Scott condensed the lengthy Mogadishu battle into a 2 1/2-hour film.